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Our purpose is to show how true religion promotes the civilization and honor, the prosperity and prestige, the learning and advancement of a people once abject, enslaved and ignorant, and how, when it falls into the hands of religious leaders who are foolish and fanatical, it is diverted to the wrong ends, until this greatest of splendors turns into blackest night.
When for the second time the unmistakable signs of
Israel's disintegration, abasement, subjection and annihilation
had become apparent, then the sweet and holy
breathings of the Spirit of God (Jesus) were shed
across Jordan and the land of Galilee; the cloud of Divine
pity overspread those skies, and rained down the
copious waters of the spirit, and after those swelling
showers that came from the most great Sea, the Holy
Land put forth its perfume and blossomed with the
knowledge of God. Then the solemn Gospel song rose
up till it rang in the ears of those who dwell in the
chambers of heaven, and at the touch of Jesus' breath
the unmindful dead that lay in the graves of their ignorance
lifted up their heads to receive eternal life. For
the space of three years, that Luminary of perfections
walked about the fields of Palestine and in the neighborhood
of Jerusalem, leading all men into the dawn